Has it almost been a full year? Every memory of life before my daughters came into being seems a tragedy. How could I have ever lived without them?

I just got back from seeing Richard Linklater’s “A Scanner Darkly,” adapted from the book by Philip K. Dick. The reviews have been mixed, so I expected not to like it, but was instead pleasantly surprised. Using the same kind of “animation over live action” style pioneered in Linklater’s “Waking Life,” “A Scanner Darkly” follows an undercover narcotics agent played by Keanu Reeves, who must ultimately narc on himself. This is the kind of science fiction film that simply doesn’t get made anymore — one which attempts to comment on modern life using a sci-fi concept to highlight our own failings. In this case, we see a near-future hell where literally everone is under constant surveillance and more than twenty percent of the population is addicted to drugs, including the cops.

I won’t say much more, but those expecting to spend an hour and a half watching animated versions of Keanu Reeves, Woody Harrelson, Winona Ryder and Robert Downey JR. strung out on drugs and talking nonsensically are absolutely right. What Linklater movie doesn’t contain some hapless meanderings? But the plot, such as it is, has its own delightful puzzles to work out, that culiminate in an expected, though still satisfying twist and final musing on the lengths governments will go to fight evils of their own creation.

Watching the film, I couldn’t help but think of our own post-9/11 dystopian society. It’s strange to think that with endless war (on drugs, terrorism, etc.), oil shortages, and apocalyptic mutterings from the evangelicals that control the government, that we now live in a world that is beginning to resemble the bleak futures once depicted in science fiction. Perhaps that gives “A Scanner Darkly” its own special resonance, being only one step away from non-fiction.